The City of Brotherly Love
Independence Hall
Philadelphia was founded in 1681 by William Penn, an English Quaker, who received a grant of 26,000,000 acres from King Charles II for the purpose of establishing a new province. The colony was named in Penn’s honor, Pennsylvania. The colony’s purpose, later codified in the 1701 Charter of Liberties, was to be a place of religious and political freedom. It was Penn who chose the Biblical name, Philadelphia, meaning “City of Brotherly Love, for that principal settlement. The city’s best-known landmark today is a huge statue of William Penn on top of City Hall tower. By common consent, and not by law, no building in the city rises higher than the base of the Founder’s statue.
Colonists migrating to the likes of Virginia and Massachusetts had to carve home sites from the wilderness but those who came to Philadelphia purchased surveyed lots in a planned community. The city was pre-laid out in straight streets and planned park spaces. The plan still holds: City Hall stands in the Center Square, named for Penn; four other squares are named for Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, David Rittenhouse and James Logan. If those latter two are not immediately recognized, Rittenhouse was an associate of Ben Franklin, and an astronomer and surveyor who utilized his knowledge of the stars in his land survey calculations. Logan, a statesman, also was Franklin’s associate, at one time serving as his secretary. Thus it can be seen that Benjamin Franklin held considerably influence in Penn’s Philadelphia.
Remnants of early Philadelphia are holding up well. A Quaker meeting house, Merion Meeting, was erected in 1695, and is still in use, every Sunday. William Penn is said to have spoke at a worship meeting there. William Rittenhouse’s 1707 house still stands near Wissahickon Creek. James Logan’s 1728 two-story brick mansion north of the city is as imposing as ever.
Structures more related to the nations history include Carpenter’s Hall at 4th and Chestnut Streets where the First Continental Congress assembled on October 26,1774. Following the outbreak of fighting at Lexington and Concord, the Second Continental Congress met at the Pennsylvania State House, now Independence Hall at 5th and Chestnut, on May 10, 1775, where John Hancock presided. More than a year later, at the same site, the Declaration of Independence was signed by members of congress on July 19, 1776—not July Fourth when the resolution was adopted or even July Fifth when the final wording was approved. The first public celebration of independence was held on July Fourth though, by a few intimates in the know, but it was over the weekend before the general public heard the Declaration’s content read publicly. The Liberty bell first rang out on that day, July Eighth.
Philadelphia was the fledgling country’s first capital, a temporary measure while Washington D.C. was being built. The first “Hall of Congress” actually was just a room in a building intended as a county courthouse. The same room is where the second President, John Adams, was inaugurated in 1797.
Ben Franklin got his name on modern Philadelphia’s infrastructure, Benjamin Franklin Parkway that runs into John F. Kennedy Plaza. The corner of William Penn’s original Broad and Market Streets is the site of the massive granite and marble City Hall, decorated with three hundred statues and carvings. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, overlooking Schuykill and Fairmont Park where William Penn originally intended to build his home, boasts more than 100,000 works of art—paintings, sculptures, tapestries, furnishings and fashions. The Philadelphia Orchestra performs at The Academy of Music, 1853, at Broad and Locust Streets. The city is home to forty accredited colleges and universities including Thomas Jefferson University medical college, Drexel University, and Bryn Mawr. See all these historic sites alongside modern Philly on your visit to the birthplace of America.
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